Only in the South can the past be woven so passionately into the present. That salient bit of time bending inhabits every form of expression, be it food, architecture, business, music, art, or politics. It’s what Faulkner meant in Requiem for a Nunwith his much-lauded epigram: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”
Which is why, one crisp late-fall Saturday night many years back, it seemed I had something like an eternity to mull the many profound whorls in the sediments of Southern time that had brought me to my—I hoped temporary—stay in the Ardmore, Alabama, jail.
Jail, or the close prospect of it, has a way of focusing the mind on immediate options and on larger cosmic issues at once. Specifically, I waited for Ardmore’s jolly desk sergeant, beleaguered with a raft of other Saturday-night miscreants, to be briefed by my arresting officers so he could decide whether my offense—the possession of one six-pack of (unopened) beer—merited an
